Rafter Ties Versus Ceiling Joists – Which One Do I Need?

here's a question that I've been receiving quite often emails comments and thought I would address the issue and it has to do with rafter ties and ceiling joists and a lot of people want to store things in their attic they want to put a ceiling in their garage or something like that and even this can be beneficial to people just understanding some of the language or some of the components used in framing so here we have a rafter tie-in it's usually a two by four and it's going to be spaced 48 inches on center and it's going to be nailed into the rafter and then angled nails or toe nails will be driven into it from the so that it can connect to the top plate and the rafter and it is going to tie to the other side of the wall this will prevent the walls from spreading apart and they can also be used in the opposite directions right here so you can see here that they're 48 inches on center and now these over here don't have to be 48 inches on Center sometimes I've seen people just one run one of these right down the middle so rafter ties can be made out of two by fours for a 20-foot garage they might need to be two by six might need to be larger if they're going to be longer or used for different types of roofs I don't want to that would be up to your engineer but for most most of the rafter ties that we used they were used in garages they were two by fours 48 inches on Center and usually would be have some type of a brace running vertical here to connect it to the ridge or the rafter to prevent this from sagging now let's take a look at ceiling joists they're going to be spaced a little closer these are 16 inches on center and you can put a few more nails into the roof rafter if you would like to come pan back a little bit here we can see it let's go ahead and remove the roof 16 inches on center 2 by 10 this is Douglas fir I went ahead and looked in one of the approved vanch artbooks and it said that a number two or better douglas-fir can't spend up to 19 feet ten inches I would imagine that would be okay for a 20 foot garage and of course that would be 16 inches on Center spacing and of course these ceiling joists are going to be used to hold up a ceiling rafter ties are not meant to to hold up a ceiling of course I say that but if you had a rafter tie that was 2 by 10 you know or you had rafter ties that were 2 by 10 16 inches on center without a ceiling on it then you could put the ceiling on it that's a pretty simple to figure out but most Raptor ties again are going to be made out of a smaller piece of lumber 2x4 or 2x6 and they're going to be spaced 48 inches on center so if you have a rafter tied that's a 2 by 10 for a situation like this it is space 4 foot on center you want to put a ceiling in it all you would need to do is install an additional two rafters or two ceiling joists in between them to meet the 16 inches on center and then of course install your ceiling so and again rafter ties can be removed remove them and replace them with the desired or they correct lumber sizes and then of course you can attach a ceiling to that so anyway that is it for this video and I hope it has shed a little more light on this subject than I have in the past you

Channel: gregvancom

Views: 212,718

Keywords: rafter tie, ceiling joist, roof framing, building, construction, carpentry, rafters, engineering, engineered connection, how to, prevent wall spreading, education, learning, do-it-yourself tips

Id: VjZssXBUHnA

Length: 4min 10sec (250 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 26 2018